Smuggler-Chasing Texas Sheriffs Want Money Not Guardsmen

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents take undocumented immigrants into custody near Falfurrias, Texas, on July 22, 2014. Photographer: John Moore/Getty Images

Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Texas sheriffs are fuming over
Governor Rick Perry’s failure to consult them before dispatching
1,000 National Guardsmen to bolster the border with Mexico.

Local officers say they’ve confronted the daily fallout
from a porous border and broken immigration system for decades,
while the Guard troops will lack authority to make arrests and
are unfamiliar with the terrain. They say even a fraction of the
millions of dollars Perry is spending would be better used to
supplement the coffers of places like Brooks County, an area so
starved of money that it relies on unpaid volunteers to maintain
order in a territory the size of Rhode Island.

It isn’t easy. Last weekend, Brooks Deputy Sheriff Kenneth
Ennis found himself in a 100 mile-per-hour chase at 4:45 a.m.
tailing a tan pickup suspected of just having just dropped off a
load of undocumented immigrants. The truck raced down a desolate
road before slamming into a wire fence.

“Sheriff’s Department!” Ennis screamed as he jumped out
of his Chevy Defender and ran toward the immobilized vehicle,
drawing his .40 caliber Glock pistol as the driver took off on
foot into the darkness. “Stop!”

Perry’s July 21 surge announcement has been widely viewed
as an attempt to augment his profile as he rides out his third
and final term and contemplates another run for the White House.
His state has been in the spotlight in recent months as a record
wave of unaccompanied children, mostly Central American, crosses
the border for relief from violence and poverty.

Working ‘Seamlessly’

The debate over how to stop an influx of undocumented
children and adults has divided the governor’s fellow
Republicans. They’re balancing attempts to look tough on
immigration without alienating Latinos, whose support they need
at the ballot box.

National Guardsmen, set to arrive this month, will work
“seamlessly and side by side” with civilian law enforcement to
combat activity by drug cartels and human traffickers, Perry
said. It’s part of a years-long effort that’s needed due to the
federal government’s failure to seal the border, he said.

Details on what the Guard will actually do remain elusive.
At a hearing last week in Austin, state lawmakers received vague
responses about the mission’s goal and duration when pressing
Major General John F. Nichols of the Texas National Guard. The
Texas Military Forces, which oversee the Guard, declined to
provide more details, citing security concerns. News reports
have pegged the operation’s cost at $12 million to $17 million
per month.

Band-Aid Approach

“That’s money really thrown away,” said Sheriff Omar
Lucio, a Democrat who oversees Cameron County, which borders
Mexico on the Gulf Coast. “Why would you spend millions on
something like that that’s not going to work?”

County officers call the surge a temporary Band-Aid that
will provide only short-term relief, if any. At the Sheriffs’
Association of Texas meeting in late July in San Antonio, the
top cops of the state’s 254 counties voted unanimously on a
resolution calling on leaders in Austin and Washington to
include them in border-control planning and operations.

“This idea of using the National Guard was never discussed
with our sheriffs,” said Don Reay, executive director of the
Texas Border Sheriff’s Coalition, based in El Paso. “We just
think we can do it more efficiently and less costly and with
less disruption to the community. Let us be part of the
planning. We know the area better than you.”

Human Trafficking

Nowhere is the failure to address local needs more acute,
sheriffs say, than in Brooks County, an almost 1,000-square-mile
(2,590 square-kilometer) expanse of mesquite trees and heavy
brush that’s a regional funnel for the trafficking of humans,
drugs and weapons.

Smugglers ply backroads to avoid an immigration checkpoint
in the county’s only city, Falfurrias, where a sign says agents
have caught more than 32,000 undocumented migrants and seized
80,000 pounds of illicit drugs -- this year alone. Migrants trek
north though vast ranches, often dying from starvation,
dehydration or rattlesnake bites.

Because Brooks is separated from Mexico by Hidalgo County,
it’s ineligible for direct border funding. Chief Deputy Sheriff
Benny Martinez helps oversee a budget of $615,000. His force has
dropped to four staff deputies from 10 as employees left for
better pay and benefits elsewhere. The deputies earn less than
$25,000 a year with no health or life insurance.

Volunteer Network

That’s left volunteers such as Ennis, a mustachioed 32-year-old father of three, to augment the force. Ennis works
full-time for the Pharr Fire Department, about 75 miles south,
and treks to Brooks to volunteer three times a month.

It’s not about vigilante justice, unlike some other groups
who have taken border security into their own hands, Ennis said.
Every person rescued is one fewer body recovered later, and most
aren’t criminals.

“They’re just human beings trying to better their lives,”
he said.

Daniel Walden, interim chief of the Donna Independent
School District Police Department, 80 miles south, founded the
volunteer network -- called the Border Brotherhood -- in June.
It’s since grown to 17 from three. At least 20 more men want to
join, Walden said, but he doesn’t have the $350 apiece needed to
outfit them with a bulletproof vest, badge, shirt and
certification. The county is too poor to provide night-vision
goggles or a reliable communication system, leaving no way to
request backup in rural dead zones.

Soccer Cleats

Border Brotherhood deputies work like any other. They know
the favorite drop-off and pick-up spots of smugglers and the
locations of the stash houses where they store human cargo. They
can tell that a car’s sunken rear wheel wells indicate a heavy
load of bodies. And they’ve learned that smugglers and migrants
have taken to wearing soccer cleats to ease escapes in the sandy
desert.

Sheriffs can’t enforce federal immigration law -- meaning
they can’t pull over someone on suspicion alone. But they can
nab people for breaking the law, so traffic infractions like
speeding or rolling through a stop sign are powerful weapons.

Sometimes the cargo is drugs, as it was on a recent Friday
night, when the pursuit of a cherry-red Pontiac Grand Am led to
the discovery of about 275 pounds (125 kilograms) of marijuana
in its trunk and back seat. The stash was wrapped in light-brown
tape and twine and outfitted with straps fashioned from seat
belts for carrying like a backpack. The driver, who said he was
a 17-year-old Mexican, was arrested; the others escaped into the
brush.

Futile Chase

More often the cargo is people, as was the case in the
high-speed chase involving Deputy Sheriff Ennis last weekend.

The relative quiet of his overnight shift broke before 5
a.m., with a colleague’s request to look out for a truck that
had made a suspicious U-turn just before reaching the Falfurrias
immigration checkpoint. Within minutes, it whizzed by, and Ennis
gunned his vehicle to catch up.

He had the dispatcher verify the license plate and learned
that the registration had expired -- just what he needed to flip
his lights and blare his siren. The driver ignored both and
accelerated before slowing to turn into a picnic area, snake
between an 18-wheeler and a cement table and plow into a fence.

A few too many steps behind, without backup and potentially
outnumbered, Ennis could do little more than watch a silhouette
disappear into the night. The truck, he would find, contained
only the driver’s seat. The others had been removed to cram in
more people.

Ennis radioed to dispatch as he panted in the heat, his
face slick with sweat: “Lost the male suspect, dark colored
clothing, heading east into the brush.”